Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Real people speak in my books about the main events of the age, such as the war, the Chernobyl disaster, and the downfall of a great empire.
I see the world as voices, as colors, as it were. From book to book, I change, the subjects change, but the narrative thread remains the same.
I'm interested in the history of the soul: the everyday life of the soul, the things that the big picture of history usually omits - or disdains.
Communism has not died. We naively thought in the '90s we had buried communism, but this is not true. It is not dead, and it will be coming back.
My writing is not just all facts and voices. I strive to create a text that works as a sign, pointing out undercurrents that lie beneath the facts.
In apartments and cottages, on the street and in the train... I listen... More and more, I turn into one large ear, always turning to another person.
Why do I write? I have been called a writer of catastrophes, but that isn't true. I am always looking for words of love. Hate will not save us. Only love.
My father was an important person, the director of the school. He could talk to anybody - simple or educated. He liked chess, fishing, and beautiful women.
To be in conflict with the authorities is one thing. We Russian writers have got used to that. But to be in conflict with your own people - that is truly terrible.
Stalin's machine can be started up again at only a moment's notice: the same informers, the same denunciations, the same tortures. The same universal, all-devouring terror.
We thought we'd leave communism behind, and everything would turn out fine. But it turns out you can't leave this and become free, because these people don't understand what freedom is.
I couldn't get published for three years. Then the times changed: glasnost, perestroika. So, for three years, I wasn't allowed to publish 'The Unwomanly Face of War,' but then it changed.
What you have to remember about Belarus is that it's a small state - it has a population of less than 10m people - and like many small states, it has to be very careful about its relationships.
Being in the public eye is easy for me because I come from a family of four generations of teachers, so I'm used to being around books and discussions. But to write, I very much need to be alone.
Women tell things in more interesting ways. They live with more feeling. They observe themselves and their lives. Men are more impressed with action. For them, the sequence of events is more important.
I do not remember any questions in my childhood other than questions about death and about loss, and it was clear that the books that filled the house were not as interesting as the conversations outside.
I have always grappled with the fact that the truth cannot be packaged into one soul or one mind alone. It is something fragmented: there is so much to it; the truth is varied and scattered across the world.
'Women's' war has its own colors, its own smells, its own lighting, and its own range of feelings. There are no heroes and incredible feats; there are simply people who are busy doing inhumanly human things.
In the West, people demonize Putin. They do not understand that there is a collective Putin, consisting of some millions of people who do not want to be humiliated by the West. There is a little piece of Putin in everyone.
When I was a child, women spoke to me of how all they had was their memories, how their husbands went to war and never came back, so many tragedies. That chorus of voices filled my consciousness. It was part of life itself.
We were romantics in the 1990s and thought that communism was dead. But 10 years passed, and Putin came, and it became obvious that the process is reversible; that communism will, to varying degrees, return again and again.
Flaubert called himself a human pen; I would say that I am a human ear. When I walk down the street and catch words, phrases, and exclamations, I always think - how many novels disappear without a trace! Disappear into darkness.
In the post-Soviet era, instead of freedom, various stripes of autocratic-totalitarianism have flourished: Russian, Belarusian, Kazakh... We are finding our way out from under the debris of the 'Red Empire' slowly and tentatively.
I was always meant to study the humanities; I was no good at math or sciences. When it came time for me to work, it was Soviet times, and journalism wasn't that free or interesting of a space. There was a lot of censorship; it was difficult.
I don't want to be like other authors and say that there are only a few story lines in literature. A story is like a human face. We have as many stories as human faces. You might have similar facial features, but they're all a little different.
There is this tradition, stretching back to Tacitus and Plutarch, that history belongs to the heroes, the emperors. But I grew up among simple people, and their stories just shattered me. It was painful that no one but me was listening to them.
I have three homes: my Belarusian land, the homeland of my father, where I have lived my whole life; Ukraine, the homeland of my mother, where I was born; and Russia's great culture, without which I cannot imagine myself. All are very dear to me.
I have collected the history of 'domestic,' 'indoor' socialism, bit by bit. The history of how it played out in the human soul. I am drawn to that small space called a human being... a single individual. In reality, that is where everything happens.
Many times, I have been shocked and frightened by human beings. I have experienced delight and revulsion. I have sometimes wanted to forget what I heard, to return to a time when I lived in ignorance. More than once, however, I have seen the sublime in people and wanted to cry.
I don't remember men in our village after World War II: during the war, one out of four Belarusians perished, either fighting at the front or with the partisans. After the war, we children lived in a world of women. What I remember most is that women talked about love, not death.
Putin has mobilized and gathered the desires of millions upon millions of people who have been lied to, cheated, who lost out in the new order of things - and in each of these people is a bit of Putin. They have come together to make the image we know as Putin. Putin himself is just the tip of an iceberg.
Women are the most denigrated social group in the Soviet Union. The idea of women's emancipation is only a slogan in - but also, I should say, in many places outside - the Soviet Union. But especially in the militaristic Soviet society, people only thought of life in terms of struggle and the workers' toil.
I've been searching for a genre that would be most adequate to my vision of the world to convey how my ear hears and my eyes see life. I tried this and that, and finally, I chose a genre where human voices speak for themselves. But I don't just record a dry history of events and facts; I'm writing a history of human feelings.
I used to live in a village, and I always loved listening to old people. Unfortunately, it was always women who were talking, because after the war, very few men were around. I spent my entire life living in the village. The village is always talking about itself; people are talking to each other as the village makes sense of itself.